jrnl crashes when adding tag argument after --change-time

[richardjs]

Diagnostic output

jrnl: v3.3
Python: 3.10.8 (main, Nov 1 2022, 14:18:21) [GCC 12.2.0]
OS: Linux 5.15.80-1-lts

Current Behavior

The following command produces an exception:

$ jrnl -1 --edit --change-time @tag
┏━ Error ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃  TypeError                                                                  ┃
┃  '<' not supported between instances of 'datetime.datetime' and 'NoneType'  ┃
┃                                                                             ┃
┃  This is probably a bug. Please file an issue at:                           ┃
┃  https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl/issues/new/choose                         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Expected Behavior

jrnl should open the most recent entry with @tag for editing, changing the time to the current time. That is to say, it should do the same as this command (which has the same arguments in a different order):

jrnl -1 @pomodoros --edit --change-time

Else, if that's complicated by looking for an optional argument to --change-time, it should produce a user-accessible error message.

Repro Steps

Running

jrnl -1 --edit --change-time @tag

(See "Current Behavior" above)

Debug output

$ jrnl -1 --edit --change-time @tag --debug
DEBUG    root         Parsed args: Namespace(debug=True, preconfig_cmd=None, postconfig_cmd=None, filename=None, on_date=None, today_in_history=False, month=None, day=None, year=None, start_date=None, end_date=None, contains=None, strict=False, starred=False, limit=1, excluded=[], edit=True, delete=False, change_time='@tag', export=False, tags=False, short=False, config_override=[], config_file_path='', text=[])
DEBUG    root         Reading configuration from file /home/redacted/.config/jrnl/jrnl.yaml
DEBUG    root         Using configuration "{'colors': {'body': 'none', 'date': 'none', 'tags': 'none', 'title': 'none'}, 'default_hour': 17, 'default_minute': 5, 'editor': 'emacs -nw', 'encrypt': False, 'highlight': True, 'indent_character': '|', 'journals': {'default': '/home/redacted/journal.txt', 'more_redacted_journals': 'redacted'}, 'linewrap': 200, 'tagsymbols': '@', 'template': False, 'timeformat': '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M', 'version': 'v2.7'}"
DEBUG    root         Using journal name: default
DEBUG    root         opened PlainJournal with 89 entries
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/cli.py", line 39, in cli
    status_code = run(args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py", line 72, in run
    search_mode(**kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py", line 191, in search_mode
    _change_time_search_results(no_prompt=no_change_time_prompt, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py", line 431, in _change_time_search_results
    journal.sort()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/Journal.py", line 194, in sort
    self.entries = sorted(self.entries, key=lambda entry: entry.date)
╭────────────────────────────── Traceback (most recent call last) ──────────────────────────────╮
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/cli.py:39 in cli                                       │
│                                                                                               │
│   38 │   │                                                                                    │
│ ❱ 39 │   │   status_code = run(args)                                                          │
│   40                                                                                          │
│                                                                                               │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py:72 in run                                      │
│                                                                                               │
│    71 │   else:                                                                               │
│ ❱  72 │   │   search_mode(**kwargs)                                                           │
│    73                                                                                         │
│                                                                                               │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py:191 in search_mode                             │
│                                                                                               │
│   190 │   │   │   no_change_time_prompt = len(journal.entries) == 1                           │
│ ❱ 191 │   │   │   _change_time_search_results(no_prompt=no_change_time_prompt, **kwargs)      │
│   192                                                                                         │
│                                                                                               │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/jrnl.py:431 in _change_time_search_results             │
│                                                                                               │
│   430 │   │   journal.entries += other_entries                                                │
│ ❱ 431 │   │   journal.sort()                                                                  │
│   432 │   │   journal.write()                                                                 │
│                                                                                               │
│ /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/jrnl/Journal.py:194 in sort                                 │
│                                                                                               │
│   193 │   │   """Sorts the Journal's entries by date"""                                       │
│ ❱ 194 │   │   self.entries = sorted(self.entries, key=lambda entry: entry.date)               │
│   195                                                                                         │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
TypeError: '<' not supported between instances of 'datetime.datetime' and 'NoneType'
┏━ Error ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃  TypeError                                                                  ┃
┃  '<' not supported between instances of 'datetime.datetime' and 'NoneType'  ┃
┃                                                                             ┃
┃  This is probably a bug. Please file an issue at:                           ┃
┃  https://github.com/jrnl-org/jrnl/issues/new/choose                         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Other Information

No response

[micahellison]

Hi @richardjs, thanks for filing this. I was able to simplify the repro steps a bit -- it turns out this happens whenever a @tag is after --change-time, like so:

jrnl --change-time @tag

jrnl's argument parser is erroneously parsing the tag as a parameter of change-time.

It turns out this is a problem with any argument that has a default and is followed by a tag. For instance, --format defaults to jrnl but running this crashes:

jrnl --format @tag

The workaround is supplying a parameter for these args, like jrnl --change-time now @tag or jrnl --format jrnl @tag though we would love a resolution to this.

A resolution should probably involve changing argparse's argument prefix handling behavior to pay attention to the tagsymbols config value. (unless there is a need for a more special case approach). It should have:

• A resolution to the bug
• New passing tests for the --change-time and --format repro steps above